Helicon West offers creative outlet for students, community
Students and teachers, parents and children, amateurs and the experienced all gather at Helicon West.
Approaching it’s third year in existence, writers from all walks of life and varying experience come to give literature a voice through reading their different works.
Helicon West was founded by Star Coulbrooke, the Writing Center Director, and Associate Professor Michael Sowder when he joined the USU English Department in 2005.
“I was teaching poetry at the time and had dreamed of having an open mic reading and so we started holding it weekly at the University Inn,” Coulbrooke said. The reading then got moved to a bi-monthly event at Citrus and Sage, she said.
During the summer the readings are held at the amphitheater on Old Main. During these summertime readings, attendance drops but variations in art are wider, she said. It was the idea of some grad students to have the event at the amphitheater and to involve interpretive dancers, singers, etc. said Coulbrooke.
Helicon West has continued on its bi-monthly course, held every second and fourth Thursday of each month, she said. The reading has found a new home recently at the True Aggie Cafe, since the owners of Citrus and Sage, where the reading was previously held, recently moved, she said.
The committee that Coulbrooke established to help run Helicon West was in charge of finding a new home for the readings. Whitney Olsen, a member of the committee got involved with Richard Steele, the owner of the True Aggie Cafe, and helped to continue the same day/time readings. He was very open to having the readings there and has been really helpful with it, Coulbrooke said.
The event is held as a motivation to get members of the community to write and to read their literature as well as students.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for the community. Too often cultural activities get pigeonholed at the university, but where this takes place in the community, then they can be involved as well, even high school students,” Elizabeth Benson, a graduate English instructor and member of the Helicon West committee said. It perpetuates the idea that everyone can be a writer, that everyone has something to say, she said.
Darren Edwards, also a graduate English instructor and committee member, said that he likes the feeling of community and the supportive networking with which Helicon West provides writers.
“Helicon serves for the community an outlet. For those writers who have other nine to five jobs and write in their spare time, it gives them the motivation to write that we get through the university,” Edwards said.
Edwards and Benson both offer attending and reading at Helicon West as extra credit for motivation for their students to go.
“It’s good to just go and listen. It makes people more comfortable knowing of the different ability levels out there,” Edwards said. The skill level of readers varies from very beginner basic to advanced authors who have published books, he said.
Different committee members take turns MCing each time by announcing who the readers will be and introducing any guest speakers that there may be, Benson said. The committee invites a variety of guest readers to come from poets in the Salt Lake area to local authors and professors. After the guest is done reading, it’s open to the community at large, whoever wants to read, Edwards said.
For those who do read, they have the opportunity of being published. Each month the committee picks two pieces to be published on broadside posters that are hung up in the Ray B. West building.
Coulbrooke said that it’s important for people to read because self-expression is really important. She said that something may not seem important until one writes about it and then they realize how important it is.
“It really raises human value. Pondering about life and what we want to say, it doesn’t live until we say it out loud,” she said.
As for those who may be beginning readers at Helicon, Coulbrooke said, “Just get up there and do it. That the thing I like most about (Helicon West) is that people are there to give you affirmation. They know what you are going through and they want to support you by affirming you. Your work and words are worth it.”